Google, Amazon And Facebook Will Just Get Away With It

WE’VE been having all sorts of lovely fun the last couple of years as people uncover the stories about how little the various internet companies pay in tax. Google sells everything in from Ireland, as does Facebook, meaning that they pay tax on their UK profits over there. Well, with a cure deal that lets them send all their profits to Bermuda without tax. Amazon does much the same from Luxembourg: meaning that the poor old British taxman never sees a penny in tax on the profits being made in the UK.

All of this is, of course, entirely legal. So, the call has been that the law must be changed so that these companies are paying more tax. And everyone went off to the OECD (the club for rich countries) and they said OK, we’ll have a look at it.

Proposals for a tax crackdown on digital companies such as Google and Amazon are to be dropped, as governments push ahead with measures affecting the global economy.

Designing special tax rules for internet companies would not be viable, given the growing digital presence in large parts of the economy, an international task force has concluded.

Umm, pretty much nothing actually. They’re not going to change the international tax treaties so that these internet companies will be taxed. They’ve concluded that it’s just all too difficult to do so and thus why bother?

Which is going to be a bit of a blow to all those peeps at UK Uncut, isn’t it, after they’ve spent all that time superglueing themselves to shop windows and the like.

Not only was what they were all complaining about legal all the time it’s going to continue to be legal off into the future.